Former Maple Leaf, two-time Stanley Cup champion officially retires
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After winger Kyle Clifford was spotted by the Toronto Sun and others working with the club's prospects before and during the July development camp, the 34-year-old two-time Stanley Cup winner with the Los Angeles Kings told multiple outlets he's retiring to be added to assistant general manager Hayley Wickenheiser's office.
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With his 160 points came a robust 982 career penalty minutes as one of the league's most diligent energy forwards.
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The Ayr, Ont., native, a former Barrie Colt, was the 35th overall pick in the 2009 draft by the Kings. He was acquired for Trevor Moore and draft picks to join former King and Cup champ Jake Muzzin in Toronto.
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Beginning in 2022-23, Clifford began a mentor's role with the farm team Marlies, was an alternate captain and played a total of AHL 126 games, with just 17 last season.
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Winnipeg Free Press
an hour ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Ryan Blaney knocks off Shane van Gisbergen for pole at Watkins Glen
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. (AP) — Ryan Blaney bested Shane van Gisbergen in Cup Series road course qualifying by three hundredths of a second on Saturday, capturing the pole position at Watkins Glen International. Blaney turned a lap of 1 minute, 11.960 seconds in the No. 12 Ford, edging van Gisbergen's No. 88 Chevrolet (1 minute, 11.993 seconds). Starting first in Sunday's 110-lap race at Watkins Glen was a surprise for Blaney, who has only three top 10 finishes on the 2.45-mile track. The 2023 Cup champion is mired in a 22-race slump without a top-five finish on a road course. 'What a cool pole,' said Blaney, who earned the 150th Cup pole position for Team Penske. 'I'm a pretty average road racer, and I work really hard to get better at it and try to figure out ways to be better. We've got to find a little bit of race pace, but it's nice to have one-lap speed. It's fun when you can sit on the pole at a place where I'm not very good.' Bidding for his fourth consecutive Cup victory on a road or street course, van Gisbergen will start second after having won from the pole at Mexico City, Chicago and Sonoma. 'Man, it's amazing how close it all is for a road course,' van Gisbergen said. 'My laps were OK, and there probably were some things I could have fixed. Decent start for tomorrow.' Chase Briscoe, who had started on the pole position the past two weeks at Iowa Speedway and Indianapolis Motor Speedway, qualified third in the No. 19 Toyota, followed by Ross Chastain's No. 1 Chevrolet and Kyle Busch's No. 8 Chevrolet. Thursdays Keep up to date on sports with Mike McIntyre's weekly newsletter. ___ AP auto racing:
Winnipeg Free Press
3 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
NASCAR driver Shane van Gisbergen aiming for elite company at Watkins Glen International
On the NASCAR tracks with the most circuitous sequence of turns, Shane van Gisbergen has shown a remarkably sublime sense of direction. But the Trackhouse Racing driver still needs help navigating his new life in the United States — such as the recent announcement of a 2026 street race in San Diego. 'I don't even know where that is,' the Auckland, New Zealand, native said with a laugh. 'I had to find it on a map. It'll be cool to go. I've never been there and get to experience all new things.' The Cup Series rookie is an old hand on road courses, which he mastered with 80 victories and three championships from 2007-22 in Supercars (the top racing series in Australia and New Zealand). Those results caught the eye of Trackhouse founder Justin Marks, who took a flier on putting van Gisbergen in a Cup car for the inaugural Chicago Street Race in July 2023. After stunning NASCAR at Chicago as the first driver to win his Cup debut since Johnny Rutherford in 1963, van Gisbergen relocated to NASCAR last year. He has won at Mexico City, Chicago and Sonoma this season, securing a playoff berth for the No. 88 Chevrolet and a multiyear extension at Trackhouse. With a victory Sunday at Watkins Glen International, a 2.45-mile road course in New York, the 36-year-old van Gisbergen would join 2020 champion Chase Elliott and NASCAR Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon as the only drivers to win four consecutive Cup races on road or street courses. Though van Gisbergen has only 37 career starts in NASCAR's premier series, his four victories already rank third among active drivers on street or road courses. 'These guys have egos, and they are not OK with this,' NASCAR on NBC analyst Steve Letarte said after van Gisbergen's win at Sonoma last month. 'When we go to Watkins Glen, I think it's basically 35 against one, because they'll be like, 'What can we do to bury this guy?'' It starts with getting close enough to rough up van Gisbergen, who has qualified first in his three wins. He won at Mexico City by 16.567 seconds, the Cup Series' largest margin of victory in more than 15 years and the largest gap on a road course in more than 45 years. He faced more pressure at Sonoma on multiple late restarts, but runner-up Chase Briscoe raced him cleanly (and then compared van Gisbergen's road course skills with Michael Jordan in his prime). 'I feel like everyone races really well, and I really love the racing here,' van Gisbergen said. 'I don't feel like anyone targets me on the track and tries to take me out, but I feel like we're the benchmark, which is really awesome. But the best thing on the road course is I've never really raced the same guy. Every week, there's someone different. The spread of talent is quite high here.' Chris Buescher is the only Cup driver to have gotten the best of him. Racing at Watkins Glen last year in a part-time Cup schedule, van Gisbergen missed a corner entry 'by centimeters' and lost to the Roush Fenway Keselowski driver on a last-lap pass. 'I studied it a lot, and that was painful,' van Gisbergen said. 'I'm quite self-analytical, and even when I think of it now, it frustrates me.' He also is a humble perfectionist in addressing his inexperience on oval tracks, which comprise the bulk of the NASCAR schedule. On the advice of 2014 Cup champion Kevin Harvick, van Gisbergen has spent his summer racing Tuesday nights at Charlotte Motor Speedway against preteens in miniature stock cars on a quarter-mile oval. He recently earned his first win on the short track, whose four turns encourage the full-contact racing that largely is absent on road courses. 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Calgary Herald
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- Calgary Herald
Carney, Trump and Rocket Richard: Best defence is a good offence
Article content Canadian hockey fans raised in the Connor McDavid era, and even those like me who fondly recall the Wayne Gretzky era, may not know much about Maurice (the Rocket) Richard, but he was a 'fiery force on ice' during his 18 NHL seasons. Article content He was the first player to score 50 goals in a season, the first to reach 500 career goals and was a leader on eight Stanley Cup-winning teams. His suspension for striking an official during a fight in March 1945, by then-NHL commissioner Clarence Campbell, sparked a riot in Montreal, which was the closest Quebec ever got to replicating the French Revolution — with Campbell barely escaping the guillotine. Article content Article content Article content Richard was once asked, 'When you cross the blueline on a breakaway, do you have a plan as to how to beat the goalie?' He replied, 'When I cross the blueline on a breakaway, I don't have the faintest idea what I'm going to do. So how can the goalie know or plan for what I'm going to do?' Article content Article content Fast forward to the North American trade arena and the unwelcome contest between Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump over tariffs. Trump, all bluster and bluff, demonstrates utter unpredictability as he approaches the Canada-U.S. border line — initially proposing to impose a blanket 25 per cent tariff on steel and aluminum, and everything else if Canada didn't tighten its borders against drug and migrant smuggling. Then a month later, a 10 per cent tariff on energy exports and a further increase on steel and aluminum. Then last month, an apoplectic fit over a proposed Canadian tax (since abandoned) on digital services, then pivoting to a 35 per cent overall tariff this month after just settling for 15 per cent tariffs in reciprocity agreements with Japan and the EU. Article content Article content In goal for Canada, to defend Canada's interests, is a former high-level bureaucrat, someone accustomed to working in the polite, predictable and orderly environment of central bankers. Someone who may quite possibly be discomfited and discombobulated by unpredictability as when Trump threatens at the blueline. Article content What to do if you were Canada's coach? What's possible, with Carney in net, to better withstand Trump attacks and even to go on the offensive? Article content Bolster the defence and team around Carney — not with Justin Trudeau-tainted ministers like Dominic LeBlanc, Chrystia Freeland or David Lametti, but with negotiators and spokespeople who have had no association at all with the Trudeau regime. Not fellow public sector bureaucrats such as Marc-Andre Blanchard and Michael Sabia (although they, particularly Sabia, may play a useful support role). Article content Bring in strong executives and union leaders with experience in the areas most susceptible to attack, but also those who can shout, bluff and tweet just as vigorously as Trump from sectors such as the oilpatch, which he needs to attain his goal of continental economic security. Article content Most importantly, do not showcase an unorganized gaggle of provincial premiers posing for photo ops, but mobilizing those like Danielle Smith and Scott Moe to move Trump by getting to his populist base. Article content And coming back to goalie Carney, if, as some commentators have suggested, we are actually heading into a 'tariff war,' maybe he could also draw inspiration and wisdom from William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada's Liberal prime minister throughout the Second World War. Article content My father, who was Alberta premier from 1943 to 1968, dealt with four prime ministers — John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson, Louis St-Laurent and Mackenzie King — and their administrations. He maintained that Mackenzie King's war cabinet and administration were by far the strongest of the four, and that perhaps his greatest strength was the ability to see his own weaknesses and deficiencies, and to recruit others to compensate for them. Article content Article content It remains to be seen whether Carney can do the same. To do so would require a substantial degree of humility, which Carney professes to value most highly and to which he devoted the last pages of his voluminous book. Article content The end result might then be 'a real Team Canada' — with skill and experience at every position as well as on the bench. A team yet to be built — not yet even in the locker-room, let alone on the ice — but a team most urgently needed if Canada is to prevail in its struggles with the Trump administration.
